If the Los Angeles Lakers, now under the direction of Mike D’Antoni, are to return to greatness, it will most likely begin with a simple two-man game: Nash to Howard, picking and rolling defenses to the brink of madness, while Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol hover ominously.

Nash is the greatest pick-and-roll point guard of his generation. Howard is the league’s fiercest big man, and a nightmare rolling to the basket — a locomotive in the lane. Their partnership should be brilliant.

“That’s as good as it can get,” D’Antoni himself told Sports Illustrated in October, weeks before he unexpectedly inherited Nash and Howard from the deposed Mike Brown.

Howard wanted to play in Brooklyn and for months pushed the Orlando Magic to trade him there. Magic officials, unmoved by the Nets’ trade offers, instead sent him to the Lakers.

Nash was weighing offers from the Knicks and Toronto when the Lakers unexpectedly came calling at the 11th hour.

“I always wanted to play for the Knicks in the Garden,” Nash said Friday during an interview at the Lakers’ training center.

Although that possibility had been rumored for years, “this summer was very close,” said Nash, who is rehabbing a leg injury and will be re-examined next weekend.

Nash met with the Knicks, the Raptors, the Nets and the Dallas Mavericks in early July. Each held a different appeal. Dallas offered a return to the city where Nash became a star. Toronto offered a chance to return to his home country. The Nets and the Knicks offered the allure of New York, where Nash lives in the summer.

By the morning of July 2, Nash had narrowed his choices to the Knicks and the Raptors. “I was happy to play with both,” he said.

That same day, the Lakers unexpectedly jumped into the fray, making an initial two-year offer if the Suns would agree to a sign-and-trade deal. Nash wanted three years. And the Suns, a divisional rival, were reluctant.

“The L.A. thing was kind of right at the deadline,” Nash said. “I didn’t even know it could be.”

The Lakers eventually increased the offer to three years. Then it was up to the Suns to facilitate the deal.

Photo

Dwight Howard and Steve Nash are expected to perfect the pick-and-roll. “That’s as good as it can get,” Mike D’Antoni said of the pair in October, before he became coach of the Lakers.Credit
Noah Graham/NBAE, via Getty Images

More than anything, Nash said, he wanted to stay as close as possible to his children, who live in Phoenix. The Lakers offered that chance — as well as a shot at title contention — and Nash said he made up his mind on July 3.

“Tuesday morning, I decided O.K., it’s L.A.,” he said.

But it took time for the Suns to resign themselves to sending Nash to the Lakers. In the meantime, an erroneous report surfaced, indicating that Nash was set to join the Knicks. It took until the evening of July 4 for the Suns to pull the trigger on the deal.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

“I felt really bad because I had to leave New York and Toronto waiting in the wings,” Nash said. “Because if Phoenix didn’t do it, I had to choose.”

Which one would he have chosen? “I’m not going to say,” he said. “Both had a huge opportunity.”

Neither city could offer what Los Angeles did: proximity to his family.

“I knew that if I were in New York or Toronto, no matter what, I’m going to see my kids far, far less,” Nash said. “Whereas here I’ve already seen them four or five times in six weeks. So that’s it. The basketball stuff is luckily awesome, too. But that was really secondary.”

Howard’s circumstances were much more complicated, partly by his own actions. In March, facing criticism over his trade demands, Howard decided to waive his so-called “early-termination option” — effectively taking himself out of free agency in 2012. Had he simply stood his ground, Howard would have been free to sign with the Nets and to join his good friend Deron Williams.

“That would have been a great place to start fresh,” Howard said Friday. “It was just everything about it — the coaching staff, owners, just everything. It seemed like they were going in the right direction.”

Howard said he and Williams were “very close” and had often discussed playing together.

“During the process, I think he kind of got upset when I signed the E.T.O. because we had talked,” Howard said.

Howard has never explained the circumstances surrounding that decision, but he acknowledged he made it “despite having second thoughts about it” because “at the time I wanted really to make everybody happy.”

The Lakers, like the Nets, had pursued Howard for months. But Howard was wary of the immense shadow cast by Shaquille O’Neal, who in 1996 also made the move from Orlando to Hollywood.

Brooklyn, Howard said, “was attractive to me because it’s a new place, a new team, and it’s a place where I could basically just write my own history.”

“I was struggling with the whole fact that if I go to the Lakers, I’ll be compared to Shaq,” he said. “I didn’t want that. I just wanted to be who I am. I hated that comparison.”

Eventually, Howard came to terms with the move, realizing that the Lakers were not just the franchise of Shaquille O’Neal, but of Magic and Kareem and West and Mikan.

Still, had he simply stuck to his agenda, Howard might be wearing the Brooklyn logo today, instead of suiting up in gold and purple.

“You never know,” he said. “But there’s a reason behind everything.”

A version of this article appears in print on November 17, 2012, on Page D3 of the New York edition with the headline: How Nash and Howard Almost Became Rivals. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe